UDID

Apple has now taken another step to push app publishers to use its preferred ad tracking option, the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), with the debut of the iOS 7 beta. Confirming what many have suspected, Apple is eliminating an alternative option involving tracking by MAC addresses. This method had sprung up following a change to Apple’s Developer Documentation in 2011, announcing… Read More

Apple’s UDID replacement for iOS 6, a more private and tool dubbed the Apple Advertising Identifier that users can opt out of, isn’t working according to mobile app marketing platform Trademob. I spoke with Trademob CEO Ravi Kamran, who explained that any iOS 6 users who updated over Wi-Fi are showing IDs that are all zeros, instead of the unique tags being sent by those who… Read More

Although Antisec claimed that they Jason Bourne-d a laptop last week in order to leak 1 million UDIDs and device names, the truth is far more mundane and yet far more interesting.
As we learned yesterday, the hacked data came from an app publisher called BlueToad. The company had recently suffered a digital break-in that exposed their customer list. Read More

Earlier today, hackers at AntiSec claimed that it had got its hands on a database containing around 12 million UDID numbers from iPads and iPhones from an FBI employee-owned computer, a breach my colleague Sarah Perez described the meaning behind and possible reifications of in a post earlier today. Now, however, the FBI has issued a statement to AllThingsD that refutes the claim.
“The… Read More

12 million Apple UDIDs (unique device identifiers) may be in the wild, or at least that’s the claim from the hacker group Antisec, which has released a sampling of that data, allegedly retrieved from an FBI laptop computer. The actual leak, however, did not include 12 million records – it included 1 million and one records. The group also claimed that they stripped out… Read More

Just when iOS developers had thought they had heard of every UDID replacement mechanism out there, Opera Software had to go and launch its own, too. Today, the company, best known as the maker of the Opera web browser, is introducing something it’s calling “App-Tribute” – and yes, it’s yet another system providing an alternative to the now deprecated UDID. Read More

As you’ve likely heard, the “UDID-calypse” is upon us. Because of mounting privacy concerns (from Congress, etc.), Apple has begun rejecting iOS apps that access UDIDs, and will eventually do away with them altogether. For now, it remains unclear how long that will take, but, in the meantime, developers are scrambling to find alternatives. (Yesterday, Kim-Mai laid out some of… Read More

As we reported this weekend, Apple has started ramping up its efforts to deprecate the UDID – the unique identifier that ties a user to a specific device, like an iPhone or iPad. The company originally announced its intentions to phase out the UDID’s use more than six months ago, with the release of iOS 5, but it recently began to reject apps from the App Store which are attempting… Read More

Velti plans to announce two new initiatives aimed at helping mobile advertisers get ahead of data collection and privacy concerns, according to a source who has been briefed by the company.
My source says Velti, a publicly traded mobile ad company, is working on the first “Do Not Track” list built for mobile. Consumers should be able to direct their smartphone browsers at a specific… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

Mobile app monetization and distribution network W3i is announcing the results of its tests to determine whether or not an iPhone’s MAC address can serve as a replacement to the UDID (the unique device identifier), which Apple is phasing out as a way for developers to track an app’s users.
According to W3i, developers can and should begin tracking the iPhone’s MAC address as… Read More

Appsfire, a mobile application marketing platform, is introducing its own solution for the issue created by Apple’s decision to phase out developer access to the UDID (unique device identifier) on iOS devices. It’s called OpenUDID. As you may have guessed by the name, this is an open source UDID initiative.
In other words, it’s an attempt at creating a non-proprietary… Read More

On the heels of Apple’s decision to phase out developer access to the UDID (unique device identifier) on iOS devices, mobile social gaming network OpenFeint is offering up a an alternative solution. The company announced today that it’s launching a single sign-on system for social game developers that will replace UDIDs on iOS.
The system will become available later this fall. Read More

Apple is making a lot of big changes to its mobile operating system with iOS 5, which is dribbling out in betas for developers ahead of a general release later this year. But there is one big change some developers are just starting to take notice of that Apple isn’t talking about that much. In a recent update to the documentation for iOS 5 (which is only available to registered… Read More